Tag: Corporate Welfare

[Editor Charlie sez: Scott Cleland takes an excellent deep dive into the “leechonomics” of the safe harbors afforded to the special people who are members of the Internet Association and the Digital Media Association. This corporate welfare was most recently replicated in the punitive Music Modernization Act retroactive safe harbor bolstering profits from copyright infringement for the special people which passed the House Judiciary Committee on the same day that the Congress cut back the CDA 230 safe harbor for the same special companies and cut their profits from sex trafficking.]

This post introduces a new white paper here with a first-of-its-kind, cost-estimation model of the cumulative hidden public costs of U.S. Internet industrial policy* entitled: “Internet Platform Corporate Welfare and Leechonomics.” *U.S. Internet-first, industrial policy in the 1996 Telecom Act, effectively exempted only Internet companies from: all U.S. communications law, regulation, and public responsibilities; normal non-communications Federal/State regulation; and normal civil liability for what happens via their platforms and business models.

Nutshell Summary: Sweeping Government exemptions and immunities from risks and costs overwhelmingly favor zero-sum, parasitic policy arbitrage and corporate welfare, which perversely fosters unproductive “leechonomics.” U.S. Internet policy most incents platform business that maximizes arbitrage spreads, i.e. taking maximal societal risk that un-immunized competitors can’t take, where the benefits can be capitalized by platforms, and the costs socialized to the public (>$1.5T), because the government has only exempted and immunized platforms from normal accountability and responsibility for consumer welfare.